Sika
Making a drama of health and safety to improve workplace wellbeing.
A multinational name in chemicals, products and systems that are at the core of building the modern world, Sika is a large-scale manufacturer in the UK and beyond. And, like any manufacturer, it has a duty of care to its people – so much so, it’s effectively in the business of health and safety.
The story.
As you’d expect, its health and safety record is outstanding – with strong systems and processes in place, and LTIs, or lost-time injuries, at an all-time low. But safety goes deeper than recordable incidents…
Before action, there’s conversation. Before conversation, there’s thought. This is where Behaviour-Based Safety (BBS) works: preventing even the potential risk of unsafe situations by ensuring people ‘think safe’. Instilling this ethos in a workforce, however, is tricky: people automatically resist ‘edicts’ or mandates from central or corporate teams.
The thinking.
So, in advancing the cause of its health and safety programme, Sika sought to instil a sense of collective responsibility – conveying that every person needed to play their part in getting themselves and all of their colleagues home safe. But – again – if this became a corporate directive, procedural and distant, it would go nowhere. Instead, we needed to inspire through interruption, entertain as well as educate, and create a sense that every Sika person had the potential to be something greater…
And so, Homecoming Heroes was born: a call to arms for the good people of Sika to rise above and beyond, protecting their friends and colleagues, safeguarding their environment – and getting everyone home safe.
The execution.
Drawing on the drama of the modern superhero movie, playing with the feel of cinematic universes, we created an internal platform putting the spotlight on the everyday safety behaviours and actions of Sika’s people – and making them feel a whole lot more epic. Balancing the bathos of high-drama setup and everyday payoff, we toyed with conventions and expectations, directly breaking down the perceived boredom of workplace health and safety, and instead focusing the conversation on simply taking care of each other and sharing the responsibility, collectively.
Combining film and workspace rollout materials, we combined light-hearted tonality and fun with a serious message at the core, ensuring that Sika’s high safety record would continue, and that its own workforce could take pride in that. Because, of course, with great pride comes great responsibility…
The results.
In doing so, we went far beyond conventional health and safety campaigns, drawing Sika’s employees into the story, making them smile and, most importantly, taking to heart the idea that each of them is responsible for each other, that everyone has the potential to be a hero when it comes to workplace safety – and, when it comes to getting everybody home safe, nobody does it better.
